Hollywood Troupe Performs Simon Comedy

February 3, 1992|By JACK ZINK, Theater Writer

The Hollywood Performing Arts Professional Repertory Theater, despite its officious moniker, is what`s known in the trade as a struggling young troupe. That much is painfully obvious in its current production of Neil Simon`s comedy I Ought to Be in Pictures.

The ensemble, which performs as guests of a church in downtown Hollywood, has moved from the sanctuary to a more accommodating fellowship hall. With spunk and determination, plus some new financial support from the city, the company hopes to make live theater a staple as part of a cultural rebirth around Young Circle.

Certainly, the area deserves it. But from the looks of things, I Ought to Be in Pictures and its ilk may not be the best way to go about it.

The play itself could have been part of the lineup last year at a similarly financially oppressed dinner theater at a Holiday Inn a block away. Simon`s comedies are the stuff that the Hollywood Playhouse community theater does often, and better, just a few blocks farther.

The truth is, neither Hollywood nor South Florida needs another shoestring commercial theater. But we could use a playhouse in downtown Hollywood that knows how to handle its resources to create something special -- perhaps like Two by Chaim Potok, which the Hollywood arts troupe will premiere later this month.

Theaters don`t have to be big to play in the big time. Some of the hottest shows of each season pop up in ``little theaters`` in out-of-the-way places on shoestring budgets.

In the good shows, the artists control their environment and in all others, the artists put themselves at the mercy of their limitations.

Not for an instant does one believe that the platform and the semi-gloss pastel flats illuminated by a row of track lights for I Ought to Be in Pictures represent the bungalow Simon created for Herb Tucker, half-successful screenwriter. Nor can we accept that the metronomic delivery of Simon`s dialogue by the actors themselves represents the interplay between a father and his daughter after years of separation.

That`s not because the production is cheap. It is, however, bankrupt when measured against the troupe`s projections. There is a big difference between the two and nobody goes to the theater to hear ``wait, it`ll get better.``

Yet it is common to be told just that. For instance, The Drama Center in Deerfield Beach, even though it has a nicely appointed space with sloped seating and about 75 fat chairs from a movie theater, also presents too many shows that look like scripted garage sales. Like the Hollywood troupe, it claims to be fully professional -- which it is in the strictest contractual sense.

And yet, other theaters manage to create more excitement with fewer resources. It happens at places such as the Area Stage in the Lincoln Road Mall on Miami Beach and, lately, the Public Theatre Studio on the 17th Street Causeway in Fort Lauderdale. The same flats -- stage lingo for painted boards or canvas -- are dressed up to become something more to the mind`s eye than just a wall. A dozen, or in some cases as few as eight or nine, lights are cleverly positioned and dimmed to illustrate rather than simply expose a scene.

Lacking even such meager effects, actors can inhabit a blank universe more easily than a poorly disguised compromise. Just as important, the audience will more willingly buy into such artists` visions than their ambitions.

I call it the difference between making do and making magic.

I OUGHT TO BE IN PICTURES

Neil Simon comedy about a teen-age New York girl who visits her estranged father in California in search of a job and his affection.